Over the last six months or so, I have read through four books by English author Joe Abercrombie. This began with his First Law Trilogy, which includes his debut novel, The Blade Itself. Following the success of this trilogy, he wrote three standalone novels including Best Served Cold which I have just completed. While it can definitely be read on its own, it is set in the same fantasy world after events of the trilogy and a number of characters appear or are mentioned. I have one more that has been lent to me called The Heroes which is the second of these standalone novels but I have set that one aside for now.
In general, there is a lot to enjoy in these novels though they aren’t my cup of tea. Similar to all too many modern novels, there are no real heroes and virtually every character is shown to be flawed in some significant way. The cripple Sand dan Glokta is probably the most prominent and likeable in the trilogy, though he is a torturer employed by the state who extracts confessions whether or not they are true. His humanity cracks through to his equally crippled conscience at a few significant points in the narrative; usually where a woman is involved. Jezal dan Luthar, a vain nobleman and Logen Ninefingers, a violent and ruthless northern warrior are the two other main characters and they too, have their moments.
Similarly to A Song of Ice and Fire and The Witcher novels, the flawed characters, corruption, violence and fornication are supposed to make the books more grounded and realistic. Yet outside of fiction, there really are moral and even heroic people who live good lives. None are perfect but there are many examples in history and today of people who lived largely virtuous lives; whether of noble or more humble origins. There are also plenty of people who get married and have children instead of fornicating, as well as people who are honest and don’t lie, cheat or steal in any egregious way. These people are real and I can point to plenty of examples in my own life as well as historically. This moral nihilism is the overarching theme to these novels and makes for a disappointing end to the original trilogy though one that is thematically consistent.
Another small criticism I have (which is less true of the later novels), is with a couple of bad writing habits Abercrombie has. Male characters (especially Jezal), say “Err” a lot and particularly in answer to females in conversation when even someone as awkward as myself would have had a ready answer. There are also a lot of irritating twin sentences that read something like, “A dog. A big dog.” From time to time this can be effective but more creative use of adjectives would have made the prose flow better. This is a minor criticism though as he writes well enough and much better than the majority of his contemporaries in the fantasy genre.
The subject of this post is not his books on the whole though but a notable character in Best Served Cold that fits in well with my growing series on ‘Gamma Fiction’.
Best Served Cold is a tale of revenge focusing on the female warrior Monzcarro “Monza” Murcatto, who is out to kill multiple people involved in betraying her, murdering her brother and leaving her for dead. The main target is one Duke Orso and others present when her brother was stabbed before her eyes and she was thrown to her (expected) death. There is a lot more to it than this but in pursuit of vengeance, she recruits a number of people to help her including a professional poisoner named Castor Morveer.
Morveer is described as balding and not particularly attractive. On first being introduced he is shown to be spiteful, sneaky and believes he’s smarter than everyone in the room. From the moment he joins, he is distrusted but for most (including Murcatto), this quickly evolves into contempt. Despite the high regard he has for himself, he is often shown to be a bumbling fool throughout the events of the novel. At one point he is comically hurt by crashing through a window after trying to escape from the roof of a fortified bank. In the same operation he incompetently kills many more people than the one he was told to target; which draws unnecessary attention to the group. In the very next mission he slinks away after achieving his objective though the rest of the crew are still in danger and in need of help. In short, he is a gamma.
At around the midway point the reader is given some introspection from Morveer who comes close to breaking his gamma delusions but it doesn’t last:
Since his earliest remembrances, Morveer seemed always to have had an uncanny aptitude for saying the wrong thing. When he meant to contribute, he would find he was complaining. When he he intended to be solicitous, he would discover he was insulting. When he sought earnestly to provide support, he would be construed as undermining. He wanted only to be valued, respected, included, and yet somehow every attempt at good fellowship only made matters worse.
He was almost starting to believe, after thirty years of failed relationships — a mother who had left him, a wife who had left him, apprentices who had left, robbed or attempted to kill him, usually by poison but on one memorable occasion with an axe — that he simply was not very good with people. He should have been glad, at least, that the loathsome drunk Nicomo Cosca was dead, and indeed he had at first felt some relief. But the dark clouds had soon rolled back to re-establish the eternal baseline of mild depression. He found himself once more squabbling with his troublesome employer over every detail of their business.
The one person who seems to have some respect for Morveer is his young female apprentice named Day, who Morveer describes when they are first introduced to the reader:
It was a pretty face, undoubtedly: heart-shaped and fringed with blonde curls. But it was an unremarkable and entirely unthreatening variety of prettiness, further softened by a disarming aura of innocence. A face that would attract a positive response, but excite little further comment. A face that would easily slip the mind. It was for her face, above all, that Morveer had selected her. He did nothing by accident.
It is not shown that there is anything more than a professional relationship but much later on it is revealed that Morveer had at least fantasised about it becoming more.
Around a third of the way through, Monza puts the idea into Day’s head that Morveer probably won’t remain a faithful master in the long-term and then about the midway point, she attempts to act before Morveer does. Shortly before she does, she puts him off guard by appealing to the delusions he holds about himself:
Morveer processed around the makeshift table, rapping his knuckles against the wood as he passed, making the glassware clink and tinkle. Everything appeared to be entirely in order. Day had learned her business from a master, after all, perhaps the greatest poisoner in all the wide Circle of the World, who would say nay? But even the sight of the good work well done could not coax Morveer from his maudlin mood.
He puffed out his cheeks and gave vent to a weary sigh. ‘No one understands me. I am doomed to be misunderstood.’
‘You’re a complex person,’ said Day.
‘Exactly! Exactly so! You see it!’ Perhaps she alone appreciated that beneath his stern and masterful exterior there were reservoirs of feeling deep as mountain lakes.
Immediately after this, she makes her move and shares how she really feels about him:
Day kicked his hand away with the toe of one shoe. ‘Doomed to be misunderstood?’ Her face was twisted with contempt. With hatred, even. The pleasing mask of obedience, of admiration, innocence too, finally dropped. ‘What do you think there is to understand about you, you swollen-headed parasite? You’re thick as tissue paper!’ There was the deepest cut of all — ingratitude, after all he had given her! His knowledge, his money, his . . . fatherly affection! ‘The personality of a baby in the body of a murderer! Bully and coward in one. Castor Morveer, the greatest poisoner in the world? Greatest bore in the world, maybe, you—’
He sprang forwards with consummate nimbleness, nicked her ankle with his scalpel as he passed. rolled under the table and came up on the other side, grinning at her through the complexity of apparatus, the flickering flames of the burners, the distorting shapes of twisted tubes, the glinting surfaces of glass and metal.
‘Ha ha!’ He shouted, entirely alert and not dying in the least. ‘You, poison me? The great Castor Morveer, undone by his assistant? I think not! She stared down at her bleeding ankle, and then up at him, eyes wide. ‘There is no King of Poisons, fool!’ he cackled. ‘The method I showed you, that produces a liquid that smells, tastes and looks like water? It makes water! Entirely harmless! Unlike the concoction with which I just now pricked you, which was enough to kill a dozen horses!’
Morveer lies convincingly here and tricks her into drinking poison to cure what really is only a harmless cut. It is not revealed whether or not Morveer would actually have turned on her but he’d already gone through multiple apprentices and by his telling, the fault was never on his side. After this, he again skulks off and turns his energies to undoing Murcatto. This he does by going straight to Orso, the one most directly involved in betraying her at the beginning of the novel. Even before the duke, he shows no less self-importance:
‘This is one Castor Morveer, your Excellency,’ intoned the chamberlain, peering down his bulbous nose.
Orso leaned forwards. ‘And what manner of a man is castor Morveer?’
‘A poisoner.’
‘Master . . . Poisoner,’ corrected Morveer. He could be as obsequious as the next man, when it was required, but he flatly insisted on his proper title. Had he not earned it, after all, with sweat, danger, deep wounds both physical and emotional, long study, short mercy and many, many painful reverses?
‘Master, is it?’ sneered Orso. ‘And what great notables have you poisoned to earn the prefix?’
At this point in the novel, he was already known to have been involved in the killing of Orso’s associates and one of his sons — making his arrogant boasting all the more dangerous. He continues:
‘Murcatto proved as treacherous towards me as she did towards your illustrious Lordship. The woman is a snake indeed. Twisting, poisonous and . . . scaly,’ he finished lamely. ‘I was lucky to escape her toxic clutches with my life, and now seek redress. I am prepared to seek it most earnestly, and will not be denied!’
Orso would realise that he could expect no more loyalty from Morveer than Murcatto received. So Morveer is given a task (that he is expected to fail) to kill all Orso’s enemies; including Murcatto. By this point in the novel, Murcatto only had Orso left to kill and with Morveer’s direct involvement in three of these killings, it is unlikely he would be rewarded with anything but a swift execution should he accomplish his task.
While spectacularly successful with one target, he is undone by the very much alive “loathsome drunk” he mentioned earlier. His final poisoning sees him celebrating prematurely:
He was still flushed by the sheer scale of his achievement, the sheer audacity of its execution, the unparalleled success of his plan. He was beyond doubt the greatest poisoner ever and had become, indisputably, a great man of history. How it galled him that he could never truly share his grand achievement with the world, never enjoy the adulation his triumph undoubtedly deserved. Oh, if the doubting headmaster at the orphanage could have only witnessed this happy day, he would have been forced to concede that Castor Morveer was indeed prize-winning material! If his wife could have seen it, she would have finally understood him, and never again complained about his unusual habits!
Unknown to Morveer, the drunk had hopped on the wagon and so poisoning all his liquor only helped him remove a treacherous subordinate. His last moments see him discovered cowering in a privy before he is run through with a sword. In the end, Morveer is given the respect he believes he deserves by being rightly blamed for the many deaths he has caused but is not alive to enjoy it.
The character is somewhat exaggerated but one of the more satisfying narrative threads in the novel is his eventual demise. I imagine most readers will dislike him at the outset and Abercrombie isn’t subtle in hinting at his eventual betrayal of the protagonist. Morveer if nothing else, is a good example of why you can never trust a gamma.